British news publication Daily Mail after reaching an out-of-court settlement, will pay millions of rupees in damages to British-born Pakistani taxi licencing officer Wajed Iqbal, whom it had falsely accused of participating in a child sex ring.
Wajed Iqbal, 44, had sued Mail stating that his life had been ruined by the defamatory article, leaving him reliant on anti-depressants, jobless, and prevented from seeing his children.
The publication had wrongfully accused Iqbal of acting as a “fixer” for paedophile taxi drivers in an article written by journalist David Rose and published in May 2017. The British-Pakistani taxi licencing officer on Thursday succeeded in securing damages from Associated Newspaper Limited (ANL) – the publishers of the Daily Mail on Sunday.
The development came around the same time as former Punjab chief minister Shehbaz Sharif held a press conference at the Carter-Ruck law firm's offices to announce that he too was filing a case against Rose and the ANL for defamation.